How long does a coin stay in circulation?

Answer 1

It varies significantly with the country that issued the coin and the coin's denomination. On average, though, many coins remain in circulation for 30 to 50 years.

When new designs are released older coins tend to stand out in change so people may remove them from circulation because they think they're interesting, different, "odd", or (often incorrectly) worth more. If the same or similar design is kept, though, some coins (e.g. old-style British pennies prior to decimalisation) could stay in circulation for 75 or 100 years.

Answer 2

How long a coin stays in circulation depends on many factors, but the generally-accepted figure is in the range of 30 to 50 years.

Some of the considerations determining how long a coin stays in circulation:

• Lower-denomination coins usually have shorter lives. They're used more frequently, tend to wear out faster, and are often thrown in boxes or jars as a relatively painless saving scheme.
• Coins made of harder metals like nickel or brass wear less than lighter metals like aluminum, so they last longer.
• If designs change frequently (e.g. the US state quarters - 4 or 5 per year) people expect to see different coins and ignore the differences. Similarly if designs never change, people don't see any difference between current and older coins except for wear. Before the UK decimalised, the penny had kept the same reverse design for decades and it was possible to find coins over a century old in change. But if designs change every 15 or 20 years, the older coins stand out in peoples' minds and they may remove the older ones from circulation as curiosities or keepsakes.
• If a large number of coins is minted in a given year they may be so common that new ones aren't needed to meet demand. When West Germany was formed following WWII, huge numbers of old Nazi coins had to be replaced. So many (almost half a billion) 1-pfennig coins were minted in 1950 that new ones weren't needed until 1966; the 1950-dated coins could be found in change until the euro was adopted.